Paris!

Wow, it has been a crazy couple of weeks. So much has happened; this promises to be my longest email yet I think. So I left off last on the eve of my grand exploration of Europe. My main traveling companions for this adventure were James, Zoe and Ryan. We set off around 6 am on Saturday morning and headed for the train station. The week before there had been an explosion in one of the tunnels RailEurope runs through. Because of this, we got pushed back to a later train from London to Paris. It was only about 45 minutes later, but it gave us time to eat breakfast, which was good. I slept most of the way to Paris, but did wake up to see some of the French countryside on the way past. We arrived in Paris at 11 AM and I found out that Pairs is a hour head of London, which I didn’t know. We were all a little nervous when we got off the train because it was our first experience at being in a country where the primary language was not English. Luckily, James knows French from taking it at college, so we weren’t too concerned. We ran into issues trying to get metro tickets first thing off the train in Paris. They had a lot of automatic machines but we couldn’t really find a real person to talk to. Half an hour later, we were sure we weren’t going to make it out of Gare du Nord. We finally found an information desk, and luckily, not only did the woman we talked to speak English, we were able to purchase a 3 day pass for all of the public transportation in Paris. We hoped on the Metro and made our way to our hostel, St. Christopher’s. We arrived about 2 hours before check in, so we went to explore our surroundings and find lunch. Keep in mind, all of this walking and standing was done while carrying a book bag that contained everything I was going to need for the next week, and probably weighed about 25 pounds at least. We had lunch at a small place called La Princesa and then went and sat by the Crimée, which is a canal that ran right by our hostel. We checked into the hostel at 2 and went up to our room. We were in an 8 person room that had 4 bunk beds. Our roommates were 2 pairs of German natives who were traveling around Europe for a while. After dropping off the majority of our clothing, we called two of our friends from the London Seminar, Chris and Doug, who were also in Paris for the same amount of time we were. Being the good tourists we were, we met them at the base of the Eiffel Tower. The Tower became the theme of our time in Paris, seeing as we spent more time in and around it than anywhere else in the city. After meeting up with Chris and Doug, we hopped on a metro and went up to the Arc de Triomphe, which is another of the most popular landmarks of Paris. From there we walked down the Champs- Élysées, which is one of the main roads of Paris and is lined with shops for a large chunk of it before it ends at the Louvre. Along our walk we saw the spot where Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV were beheaded during the French Revolution. We followed the Champs- Élysées all the way to the Louvre. From there we got on a train to the Ile de Cité and Notre-Dame. By this point in the day, it was getting pretty late so we found dinner from a vendor near Notre-Dame and headed back to St. Christopher’s.
The next morning, we woke up and had breakfast at the hostel. We met up with Chris and Doug under the Eiffel Tower around 10:45 and got on a train out to Versailles. When we got there we saw this really cool looking clock that was made out of living plants. We walked from the train station out to the palace itself and wound up standing outside in line to get in for about an hour and 45 minutes. We started with the apartments of the Dolfín, who is the next in line to be King. We also looked through the apartments of the various mistresses of the king. The main palace was very impressive. It contained a huge number of rooms, including the Hall of Mirrors, the Hall of Battles and a hallway that contained numerous statues and busts of famous people from French history. Something that really sticks out in my mind was the presence of different statues of modern art that were on display inside the palace. There was a massive, magenta, metal balloon dog, as well as a blow-up lobster hanging from a chain where a chandelier should have been, that really stick out in my mind. I wasn’t entirely appreciative of their presence inside Versailles. I personally felt that they would have been better outside in the gardens, rather than inside the palace. The gardens were beautiful in their own respect. You could tell that a lot of work went in to their upkeep. We got lunch by the train station and went back into Paris. We walked by Les Invalides, which is where the body of Napoleon is kept. Chris and Doug needed to go back to their hostel, so we went back with them and saw the Moulin Rouge on the way. After stopping in their hostel, we walked back to the metro and found a pizza place on the way. We grabbed two pizzas and went back to the Eiffel Tower. We sat looking at the Tower, lit up at night, and ate pizza, which is a memory that will probably always stick with me. When we were finished eating we actually took a journey up the tower. It was a little scary to be up that high, but the view was stunning. We stopped for a while on the second level of the Tower and then continued our trip, up to the very top. It was windy, dark, and cold, so I was a little freaked out to be so high up, but it’s an experience I won’t forget. The lights of the city were amazing to see. It also happened that there was a harvest moon that night, which made it that more cool. While we were on it, the Tower light up and stated sparkling. It would have been cool to see from the ground, but even more amazing to see from on the Tower. While we were there, we noticed that they were selling glasses of champagne at the top, so, just to be able to say that we’ve done it, James, Ryan, Zoe and I all pitched in and bought a glass between the four of us. It didn’t taste very good, but now I can say that I’ve had champagne at the top of the Eiffel Tower at night. After coming back down off the Tower, we decided that since it was our last night in Paris, we wanted to see some of the other famous sights of the city at night. We hopped on the metro and went back out to the Arc de Triomphe and snapped a few quick pictures. Then we ran back to the metro and went down to the Louvre and got pictures of it at night as well. So, after a day of running around, we went back to the hostel and crashed.
Out last day in Paris was just as eventful as the previous two. First on our list of things we still needed to see was the inside of the Louvre. We actually wound up basically running through the museum. They brag that it would take weeks to really see everything inside the museum. What they fail to mention is that you can hit the major sights, plus some other cool things, in about 90 minutes. Among other famous paintings and sculptures, we got to see the Mona Lisa, which was amazing. From the pictures you really can’t tell exactly how small it really is. It probably didn’t help that it was hanging, by itself, on a massive free-standing wall in the gallery, but it was still amazing to see. After the Louvre, we went out and found the opera house where the Phantom of the Opera is supposed to have taken place. One of our traveling companions, Doug, wanted to see the grave of Jim Morrison, so we stopped by the cemetery where he is buried. We then went to the Pompidou center, which is really interesting, architecturally. It was designed with the stairs and heating system on the outside of the building, as opposed to the inside. There is also a really cool water fountain outside of it. From there we headed back to the Eiffel Tower and then struck out on our quest to find the miniature Statue of Liberty in Paris, the one that was featured in the second National Treasure movie. It took us a while to find it, and it was a lot farther out that I thought it would be, but it was still pretty cool to see. The statue is actually a lot smaller than the one in New York, but it was still like a little piece of home. Doug and Chris had to run off really quickly to catch their train to Italy, but we had a couple of hours to kill before our train left, so we walked back to the Eiffel Tower and sat under it for about and hour and a half. We then went to Gare du Nord and got on our night train to Berlin.